a collection of words about God and life and art and baseball and football and hope and my family and my ministry and music and the immense joy in each moment of all of it. it's a record of being human. welcome.

Search This Blog

doubly amped

this is sort of a strange week for me, because i am at once incredibly amped about the beginning of the nfl season on sunday, and emotionally sheepish about the 10-year anniversary of 9/11. i have already begun my own kind of personal memorializing (which i will probably write more about later this week) so today i want to write about the steelers.

opening day is awesome. in baseball, it represents the beginning of spring and the death of winter. but in football, it represents not only the beginning of fall, but also it represents 1/16th of the regular season, so it is a more meaningful game, so to speak, than baseball's opening day. and it's easy to get excited about. if the steelers were scheduled to play against the north east high school grape pickers (it's a real team!), i would still be so wildly excited about it that i would be counting down the hours and pacing and eating my finger nails like they're snyder's sour cream and onion. ﻿

but they're not playing the grape pickers. they're not even playing the browns. no, the nfl schedulemakers have decided to mix the excitement of opening day with the frenzy of the biggest rivalry in the nfl right now to create what will surely be a rise in heart-related hospital visits all across the tri-state region. my heart is racing just as i type this.

it's going to be sick.

in a good way.

there have been some wars of words this offseason, including lamar woodley and joe "unibrow" flacco going back and forth in the media, and ryan clark telling a pittsburgh radio station that the rivalry really isn't a rivalry since it has been largely one-sided recently, at least in terms of wins (and certainly in terms of playoff wins). so, not the game needed it, but it will have a bit of extra "punch" to it. given the fact that these players are chomping at the bit to play (because of the awful off-season); that it's opening day; and that it's steelers - ravens, it will very possibly be the end of me. and possibly several of the players.

in case you are new here, or have forgotten (or tried to block out) my passion about this, you will be delighted to know that if you do a google image search for "steelers ravens" this image (which i made last year!) is on the second line of images:

after that, all that is left to say (at least for today) is HERE WE GO STEELERS, HERE WE GO!!!!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

here's the thing...i feel like the world needs more affirmation and encouragement. the world needs more positivity, more joy, more love. and while i can't change "the world," i can change the way i act and the things i do. so i have decided to start telling people how awesome they are. and i think it is important to do some of that in a public way. so, here is a (slightly edited) letter i sent to our sons' elementary school principal. he is awesome. i hope it inspires you to tell someone how awesome they are, too. and be awesome, yourself.

Mr. Feldman,

I wanted to send you a quick note just to offer some affirmation, gratitude, and maybe even encouragement. I believe that SCASD is a great school district, but I also know that being in public education can be a tough gig these days. I admire teachers and administrators, especially when they do their job as a vocation, with passion and conviction. This I see in you. I will name three things I have per…

so here's the thing: i call myself a Christian. actually, i don't even use that word as much anymore, because it ends up being a wedge between me and many other people as soon as i use it. instead, i like to say that i'm a Christ-follower (which is closer to the way the very first Christ-followers talked about it anyway). to be a Christ-follower is to - wait for it - follow Christ. i know, surprising, right?

well, it shouldn't be a shock to us that being a Christ-follower, or a Christian, means following Christ, but in America in 2018 calling yourself a Christian often has far too little to do with actually following Jesus. when people call themselves Christians in america today, they may mean any number of things, such as:
-i went to a church sometimes when i grew up;
-i once got 'saved' at a christian camp or crusade;
-i believe in God;
-i am in favor of traditional american evangelical political positions;
-i say merry christmas instead of happy holid…

my friends, this unparalleled woman is celebrating a birthday today, and i cannot help but stop and say thanks that she was born. every once in a while i imagine my life without her, and it is a dark and grim vision. in this vision, there are no children living in my house, no voices singing opera from the shower, no kids books strewn across the living room. in this vision, i eat spaghetti-o's from a can for dinner every night, and i am stuck in every rut i've ever gotten into. in this terrifying vision the color of everything is gray, music sounds like a monotonous drone, and everything feels like long, cold nights.

but she was born!

and somehow our paths were blessed to cross, and somehow i was able to convince her that spending her life with me wouldn't be as awful as it might have seemed, and somehow these last 19 years feel like the blink of an eye; like a colorful, melodic, sun-drenched, joy-filled, broken-but-blessed blink-of-an-eye journey. all because on th…